Review Summary: Their most accessible and yet most personal project
There’s, once again, so much to say about this album, so let’s tell this strange tale from the beginning. In a time of legends, there was a hero named Manas who united all the 40 Kyrgyz tribes and saved his people from their enemies. An epic poem, longer than the Odyssey, was written about him, and bards known as manaschis still perform it. Thousands of years later, in 1999, two teenagers from Kyrgyzstan decided to form a metal band. After many years of hard work, they were introduced to a broader audience (by extreme metal’s standards) with their albums “Epos and “The Great Silk Road”. So, they were signed to Immortal’s former label, Osmose Production, who are still a pretty big deal in black metal. Their first album with Osmose is in many ways the one that they waited their whole career to make, about the epic of Manas. It is, as far as I know, the first metal album about this legend.
First let’s explain where this album might lose some of you. It’s not “The Great Silk Road Part 2”, there’s something different, less original about it in some ways. Imagine an almost symphonic black metal band with lots of keyboards, like Dimmu Borgir, or Opera IX but with lyrics in Russian and a mix of raspy singing and screaming just like Arkona. Let’s just say that only a really talented band with a very original sound could make this combination work. But it mostly does.
The only time you’ll hear someone sing in Kyrgyz is on the intro and outro of opener “Манас-мститель” with the voice of a manaschi slowly rising from the darkness. Then come the heavy, grandiose riffs and crazy fast drumming (that’s what happens when your drummer is your main songwriter and founding member, and this album is the one he’s always wanted to make). Then you have the snarly vocals, slightly higher to sound more typical of black metal, but as raspy and strange as ever, just like the short jaw harp and throat singing break remind us that this is a Darkestrah song as usual.
More about Kriegtalith’s performance, then, since it was her last album with Darkestrah and as of today her last musical project ever. It gives the album a bittersweet undertone, but this might be one of her best vocal performance, because we finally get to hear her regular singing voice, especially on the melancholic and folky “Память (Старик) ». Her singing is as strange and raspy as her screaming, especially when she does a one-person call-and-response between the two. With its powerful keyboards and folky melodies, this is the song that feels the most like a combination of Dimmu Borgir and Arkona, but it’still very much a Darkestrah song.
I’m mentionning Arkona because I can’t think of too many other folk metal bands with a female singer who can growl and sing, and the ones I know do sound like Arkona. And yet, while her singing can sound similar to Masha Arhipova at times, it has an unusual tone that sort of reminds me of many other singers as well, but not completely. Cadaveria, maybe ? Or even Lita Ford in her later albums ? (Take this as a hint of things to come). Yet none of these comparisons feel really right. Let’s just say that her singing has a dark, yet strangely hypnotic and comforting tone while her screaming is hoarse and raspy, but really powerful and well performed. It’s easily one of the best parts of « Победа », along with the powerful drumming and occasional acoustic parts among the loud riffs and keyboards, which give a song a very cinematic feel.
I guess that Darkestrah thought they had to lean towards a symphonic black metal sound to attract a wider audience, and it doesn’t really suit them, but they’re still clearly trying to make Kyrgyz symphonic black metal, which you won’t hear from anyone else. They haven’t lost the root of their musical style, as you can hear in the instrumental interlude « Кыргызстан », which sound straight out of « Sary Oy ». It perfectly transitions into the last track, « Манас-батыр », with its heavy, almost doomy riffs, snarled vocals and occasional dark singing, basically a combination of all the sounds and the ambition of the album.
This is why this album is such a joy to listen to. Yes, it feels a little over-produced and less original that their previous stuff, yes it may confuse ambition with excess sometimes. But it has grown on me. It still sounds really good, and it still very much as the instantly recognizable, inimitable Darkestrah sound. That’s why there really is no other band like Darkestrah, and why the music world would be very different, and much less interesting without them. This album didn’t exactly make them more successful, but it would be a great starting point for someone who is trying to get into Darkestrah but is more used to the more accessible side of metal. It’s also, in a way, the end of an era, which is why I have this strange attachment to it. Darkestrah without Kriegtalith is kind of like Tristania without Vibeke or Morten : not awful, in fact their last album « Nomad » was pretty good, just like Tristania’s « Darkest White » was better than I expected, but I have to admit it’s just not the same. But we still have « Manas », « The Great Silk Road », « Sary Oy », « Epos » and « Embrace of Memory », so go listen to them, starting in any order you like.
